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Wednesday, 6 July 2011

Video Subbing: Tortoise Matsumoto on MUSIC JAPAN (2009)

Hello again, thanks for reading this blog, and thank you to those who were recently kind enough to start following! ヽ( ´￢`)ノ ﾜ～ｲ !!

Today's post is another video that I subbed. This time around it's Tortoise Matsumoto (トータス松本), the vocalist for the bandUlfuls, who has been working on his solo career for the past 3 years or so. Here is his appearance on the show 'MUSIC JAPAN', hosted by Sekine Mari and techno-pop trio Perfume sometime in 2009. They talk about some varied topics, from food to Mick Jagger's skinny hips.... Anyway here it is.

(Sorry if the weird mark in the middle bothers you...it's the first time I used the program and didn't realise that it puts it there).

As in all (well probably) other posts that I've done/will do about video's I've subbed, I'll talk about some random stuff that is brought up in the video, such as specific Japanese that you might not know and hard to translate words. Hopefully you'll find it interesting.

TSUKIMI UDONI'm sure that most of you would know what udon is. But if not, it's basically a thick noodle made from wheat flour. There are quite a lot of different types of udon, with specialties in many areas of Japan. In this video, Tortoise-san talked about 月見うどん 'Tsuki-mi Udon' which means "Moon watching udon".

You might have guessed from the picture, but its because the egg in this type of udon resembles a full moon.

Translation error.......Oh noooooo I'm sorry I just watched the video again, and found an error. There's a bit where I wrote that one of the Perfume girls asks "Do the udon soups differ?". She actually asks about the texture (?) of the noodle. Not sure if texture is the right word but it's about how bouncy or soft the noodles are. I don't know if there's a word for it in english, but in Japanese it's コシ 'Koshi'. I suppose it's kind of like Italian al dente stuff with their spaghetti.Anyway...please excuse my slackness on proof reading/listening/translating

<(_ _)> Thats the front view of someone doing a 土下座 'dogeza', which is bowing while sitting on the ground, if you can't see it.

MAME-DAIFUKU
Ok, another food was mention in this video. Here it is....

It's called the 豆大福 'Mame-daifuku' and is a traditional kind of Japanese treat. 豆 'Mame' means beans, while 大福 'daifuku' is the type of treat, which is 'something' with mochi in a small ball/bun shape. That something can be many things, such as a strawberry, like with this Ichigo-daifuku.

You can buy me in one of the Asakusa train stations!! Can't remember which though!!

The white doughy (well its pink in the strawberry one) stuff is the mochi, which is made from mashing a type of sticky rice (もち米 'Mochi-gome'). Mochi is the basis for many traditional sweats (such as 'Dango'), and is eaten on new years day and can be served in a number of ways, most commonly with soy sauce, kinako powder or Anko.

Going back to Mame-daifukus, as the name suggests, the flavouring for this type of daifuku is beans. Red beans to be specific. Red beans are soaked and boiled with sugar to make 餡子 (anko), which I is like a brown, sweet and lumpy paste. This is also one of the most common things used in Japanese sweets. According to Tortoise-san it's also packed with good nutrients. yay!

An interesting Japanese word he used when talking about mamedaifuku is 腹持ち 'Hara-mochi'. This is a word that describes how long food stays in your stomach and its capability at keeping you from feeling hungry after eating. I'm quite positive there's no word for it in English, but if there is, I'd be glad to know.

SOME INTERSTING TORTOISE FACTS
Tortoise Matsumoto obviously isn't his real name. It's actually Matsumoto Atsushi, and adopted his artist name because of his immense fondness of turtle/tortoises......lol